Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. We’re still in the ‘between’ garden season here, where the winter veggies are slowing down and the spring crops are starting to come in. We’ve gotten about a pound of asparagus so far, and recent rains should really get it popping up. The kale rapini is winding down, but I got about a half pound of it last week and it has really been a treat. The Western Front and True Siberian kale plants have made a lot of rapini. We’re still eating kale leaves too but I didn’t cut any last week.
kale rapini and asparagus
I had a flat of lettuce seedlings that needed thinning last week, and they had gotten large enough to save them and use them in a salad. Had they been smaller they would have wound up on the compost pile, but these were plenty big enough to serve as ‘baby’ lettuce. I got several cups of them, and we enjoyed them one day on a salad we had for lunch. I’m not a fan of wasting food and these were certainly worth the minimal effort to clean them up.
lettuce thinnings
Meanwhile, I cut a bit more of the winter planted lettuce from the greenhouse. This is Salanova Red Butter, along with a bit of Tango that had re-sprouted after I cut the main head a couple of weeks ago.
Salanova Red Butter lettuce
Also from the greenhouse I made a big cutting of parsley to make a tabouli salad. The parsley plants in there are getting ready to bolt, so they won’t be around much longer. Until then we have lots of parsley to enjoy. I don’t dry it because I think it loses it’s flavor, plus we pretty much have the fresh version available year round.
parsley for tabouli
And I continue to cut microgreens as needed. This is the Mild Microgreens Mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. I started more microgreens last week to keep the harvests growing. This time I made my own mix using seeds for collards, Tokyo Bekana and some old lettuce seed I had on hand.
mild microgreen mix
In the future harvests department, the Patio Baby and Fairy Tale eggplants I started early and potted up into containers are doing well. I have three growing in pots and one in a grow bag. These should give us an early taste of eggplant at least a month before the ones planted in the main garden start fruiting. Both of these varieties are AAS Winners and do quite well in containers. I brought them in on Saturday night when a bit of frost was forecast, but hopefully that will be the last frost of the season.
container grown eggplant
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!
It’s my first time growing asparagus Dave and I’m amazed at the daily harvests I’m getting. It’s pretty wonderful to turn the corner on the plot and see shoots that were just emerging yesterday ready for harvest today! What a treat 🙂 Our patch is much smaller than yours, but I’m planning a new one, inter-planted with strawberries, next year.
I think the great thing about asparagus is that once you get it established, it just keeps on producing year after year. This will be our twelfth year harvesting from ours.
We need to grow more salad greens this year but we are giving up on aubergine (eggplant) as we get very little from it for the effort of growing it.
Salanova is a very pretty, that head looks so perfect. I’ve had a big gap in the lettuce harvests, the spring lettuces were very slow to get going this year. Now that the weather has warmed up and the rain has nearly finished they are finally starting to take off.
I would love to have parsley year round – perhaps if I eventually get that greenhouse one of these days it will actually overwinter for us. Same thing with the kale rapini – I often leave the plants in the ground to clean up in the spring but they obviously don’t make it through our winters without protection.
I rarely can get parsley or kale to overwinter outside here either. In the greenhouse, it’s easy.